Putting our effort on present to conquer the future

Have you ever thought that getting something we want in the future is easier than we thought? It can be our goal, or dream, or how we want ourselves to be. We often think that it’s hard to achieve, long way to get it or we might even think no way I’m going to get it.

Here is a little bit story from me, to remind us about it.

This weekend I played bowling with my friends. We didn’t plan to play it in the first place, but since our first plan to kayak was not working because the lake for kayaking was used for competition then we might as well as doing something else. And to be honest, I don’t play bowling that good, but my friends do. They share me some tips which they use and make them can score well, and here they are:

1. Practice the basic

My friend told me not to walk and then roll the ball, instead he asked me to stand close to the line then send the ball forward. It reminds me when the first time I had my basket ball lesson on lay up. My teacher used to say, no matter how cool your style is, but what goes in to the hoop is more important. In other word, style doesn’t count, not as important as the score. It also means sometimes we need to know the very basic rule or way of doing things before we do it in stylish way, unless your score is determined by how stylish you are. 🙂

2. Focus on the dots

The second tips from my friend is noticing the dots on the platform when we walk before throwing the ball. The dots are connectors as a straight line to the other end. So if I align my hand correctly and move it according to the dots, it most likely will hit the pin on the other end. Don’t you think sometimes we look too far ahead and forget that the solution is closer than we thought.

3. Roll the ball

I like to call it as a lay up, because I found the similarities between this and lay up in basket ball. It means don’t throw the ball, but release or send the ball. If we just “throw” it, then according to physics, there will be some force on the ball which most likely will make it not moving according the original path. Most of the times, we are not calm enough when we reach the final stage of a process. We often make last minute mistakes which can ruin the whole journey we made.

4. Practice makes perfect

Last tips but not least, we need to practice what we have learned. As old saying said “practice makes perfect”. We may fail for the first, second or maybe many times, but we learn something each time we fail (unless you’re stubborn enough to keep failing). I believe most of us learn something from our failure. It can leads us to make new or different mistakes too, since we learn not to repeat the same mistake.

Lastly, my friends are not playing professionally though, but this tips are working for me since I have better score near the end of the game.